2009-11-18

Atlantis Day 3 Round Up

After a successful docking to the ISS, the Atlantis crew set to work familiarizing themselves with the facility after a safety briefing and installing one of the two huge cargo carrier platforms loaded with spare parts on to the station's truss. Nicole Stott, formerly an ISS crewmember, officially joined the Atlantis crew as the seventh member and will ride home to Earth on the Shuttle. Stott will be the last station crewmember to use the Shuttle for station access, with Russia providing crew transport on Soyuz rockets until the new Ares I rocket is ready to fly.

The ISS crew have been having some problems with the new water recycling unit and have packaged up a broken distiller to return for repair on Atlantis. There is plenty of reserve water in the interim though, so the broken unit is of no cause for concern.

Atlantis crew Mike Foreman and Bobby Satcher will sleep overnight in the Quest airlock to prepare for tomorrows spacewalk. They will purge their bodies of nitrogen to eliminate any chance of contracting an illness known as "the bends" after working in the reduced pressure environment of a spacesuit.

NASA are a little slow on this for some reason, but the Flight day 1 highlights are now up on YouTube. Enjoy!



Watch out for the highlights on NASA TV, which will be played on the hour every hour during the crew sleep period, beginning tonight at 9:00pm EST.

SpaceHead
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